Canonical's dream of a converged mobile and desktop platform advances—slowly.

One of Canonical's main goals in bringing Ubuntu to mobile devices is to create a converged platform across smartphones, tablets, and PCs. As such, a developer should be able to write an app that has a single code base yet runs on all three types of devices, presenting a different interface to the user on each form factor.

Technically, this has already been achieved. Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon this week showed off Karma Machine, a reddit client built by a third-party developer using the Ubuntu SDK:

While that app can run across phones, tablets, and PCs, you won't actually find it in the PC version of the Ubuntu Software Centre right now.

Apps with the ability to run on all platforms "are currently available to Ubuntu for smartphones and tablets and will be available on the desktop when we release Unity 8 on the desktop at a later date," Bacon told Ars today via e-mail.

The Unity 8 user interface is already powering Ubuntu for phones, and it will power the version of Ubuntu for tablets expected to come in Ubuntu 14.04 in April. However, on the desktop, Canonical has decided to delay Unity 8 (and Mir, the new display server) until at least 14.10, which comes out in October.

There are security reasons for not making cross-platform applications available on the desktop software store yet, even though developers can make them available through other channels. Bacon explained:

We don't plan on shipping apps in the new converged store on the desktop until Unity 8 and Mir lands. The reason is that we use app insulation to (a) run apps securely and (b) not require manual reviews (so we can speed up the time to get apps in the store). With our plan to move to Mir, our app insulation doesn't currently insulate against X apps sniffing events in other X apps. As such, while Ubuntu SDK apps in click packages will run on today's Unity 7 desktop, we don't want to make them readily available to users until we ship Mir and have this final security consideration in place. Now, if a core-dev or motu wants to manually review an Ubuntu SDK app and ship it in the normal main/universe archives, the security concern is then taken care of with a manual review, but we are not recommending this workflow due to the strain of manual reviews.

The current goal is to get Unity 8 on the desktop in 14.10, "but we are always assessing our roadmap and reviewing what is realistic," Bacon wrote.

Cross-platform apps look pretty good on the desktop today, as seen in the above video, but they still aren't totally consistent with the look of other desktop apps. "We haven't finished optimizing them for desktop," Bacon wrote. "As an example, we want to handle menus, add right-click menus, scrollbars etc. That work is on-going. So, today they converge on phone and tablet, and they run on desktop, but in future apps will be optimized to run and feel like desktop apps more."

The other ambitious goal related to mobile/desktop convergence is Canonical's plan to let Ubuntu phones become a full-fledged PC by docking with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Just when this will become available is also unclear.

Further Reading

Ubuntu's desktop "on its own will die"—Shuttleworth on why Canonical must expand.

While users can download and run Ubuntu on certain Nexus mobile devices today, Bacon told Ars that Canonical is "not enabling [desktop docking] for the Nexus devices at this time."

No carriers or handset manufacturers have announced plans to offer Ubuntu devices, and Bacon has said he doubts any major OEMs and carriers will do so in 2014. The phone-as-PC docking technology likely won't become available until enabled by a manufacturer.

"This is a technology we have running now, but we are working with OEMs and Carriers to bring it to market," Bacon wrote.

Canonical unveiled Ubuntu for phones more than a year ago, saying that it was aiming to get a phone released in the last quarter of 2013 or first quarter of 2014. It doesn't look like that is going to happen, but Canonical's deep-pocketed founder, Mark Shuttleworth, has shown no intention of abandoning his dream of building a single operating system that can run on all devices.

I wonder if Microsoft or Canonical will get this unified thing working first? Though Apple could have done it long ago had they wanted to given the iOS heritage (and arguably, they should have).

But the bigger question will still be, what phones are going to run Ubuntu Mobile? Will there ever be a big enough market to justify any tweaking to handle that form factor? Given that MS with all their money and momentum haven't cracked that nut yet, it's hard to see Canonical making it happen. But then, APple was beleaguered right up until they were a powerhouse.

If this does not work, how was Edge supposed to work? Sounds apps would need extensive custom modifications to work on Edge.

The mobile apps would have worked as well as they do. When you docked it, however you couldn't use those mobile apps since they don't allow desktop apps yet. You would then have a standard Ubuntu desktop. Custom modifications would be optional. It wouldn't have been the most optimal experience, but that would be coming in Unity 8.

I really like Canonical's goals, but I don't like the methods their using. If they would stick to Wayland and implement this, it wouldn't be so much work to maintain all parts of the system internally, and they wouldn't divide the Linux community between two competing X11 replacements. On the other hand, I'm glad they are taking the initiative and pushing Linux systems into the converged world in a unique manner, but they need to move faster and make a compelling case to OEMs if they want the convergence phones to gain traction.

I wonder if Microsoft or Canonical will get this unified thing working first? Though Apple could have done it long ago had they wanted to given the iOS heritage (and arguably, they should have).

It's not that simple. If it were, Android wouldn't have been the first or currently the only one doing it. Apple, Microsoft, and Canonical are all originally desktop OSes that have moved into mobile. Neither the OSes nor the software ecosystem around them were designed with cross-hardware, cross-platform portability of compiled programs in mind.

I wonder if Microsoft or Canonical will get this unified thing working first? Though Apple could have done it long ago had they wanted to given the iOS heritage (and arguably, they should have).

It's not that simple. If it were, Android wouldn't have been the first or currently the only one doing it. Apple, Microsoft, and Canonical are all originally desktop OSes that have moved into mobile. Neither the OSes nor the software ecosystem around them were designed with cross-hardware, cross-platform portability of compiled programs in mind.

Android was originally a Camera OS, not a Desktop OS. And again, Android was desiged with cross-platform portability.

Now, to the OP, Canonical is UNIQUELY positioned amongst Android, Windows, and OSX. That reason being that nearly everything in ubuntu is opensource, which means a new platform is just a re-compile away. They can offer LibreOffice for ARM on your mobile, so when you dock it, you have LibreOffice. Whereas in any other space you have to go to the app vendor and get them to do it. I'm not talking a mobile version, just a regular version to run on your phone when docked. For Microsoft to do this, they have to go to Adobe, and any number of companies and get them to compile for ARM. Canonical can just git/get the source and package it themselves, like they already do for Ubuntu. LibreOffice, Inkscape, whatever the linux replacement for iTunes is...

The fact that you can carry a phone around and FULL modern computing environment I think is a big deal.

EDIT: Your only other option is to get a x86 mobile device and run the x86 code natively, but there are few if any mobile x86 devices at this time.

I really want to see a 'phone as a docking station' implementation done right.My ideal scenario is something like an Atrix device running linux with a wireless display and bluetooth keyboard mouse built in. (or at least HDMI)I wouldn't need to carry a laptop and a desktop experience is just a dock (keyboard, mouse, screen, battery) away, which I can use to convert my phone into a laptop and charge it as well

I wonder if Microsoft or Canonical will get this unified thing working first? Though Apple could have done it long ago had they wanted to given the iOS heritage (and arguably, they should have).

But the bigger question will still be, what phones are going to run Ubuntu Mobile? Will there ever be a big enough market to justify any tweaking to handle that form factor? Given that MS with all their money and momentum haven't cracked that nut yet, it's hard to see Canonical making it happen. But then, APple was beleaguered right up until they were a powerhouse.

Microsoft will be first. Canonical or Apple will do it right as Microsoft's approach (one UI, multiple devices) has always been flawed.

What would be the point of running mobile apps on desktops? Many mobile apps are wrappers around web sites that one would normally just visit in a browser on the desktop. Those apps exist only because web standards have limited support for touch, which is the primary input method on mobile device. Web apps are capable of a lot more on desktops because they work well with standard input methods, and because desktop browsers are significantly more powerful than their mobile counterparts. There is no need for a "native" CNN app or banking app on a Core i5 machine when the websites work just fine in a browser.

Now, to the OP, Canonical is UNIQUELY positioned amongst Android, Windows, and OSX. That reason being that nearly everything in ubuntu is opensource, which means a new platform is just a re-compile away. They can offer LibreOffice for ARM on your mobile, so when you dock it, you have LibreOffice. Whereas in any other space you have to go to the app vendor and get them to do it. I'm not talking a mobile version, just a regular version to run on your phone when docked. For Microsoft to do this, they have to go to Adobe, and any number of companies and get them to compile for ARM. Canonical can just git/get the source and package it themselves, like they already do for Ubuntu. LibreOffice, Inkscape, whatever the linux replacement for iTunes is...

The GUI apps in Linux are mediocre at best. That's nice that Canonical can instantly recompile RhythmBox and Shotwell for ARM, but Android has far better apps for those consumer applications like music playback or photo management.

I'm a die hard Ubuntu desktop user for programming work and academic/engineering work in LaTeX/R type tools. 99% of the time I'm in a browser, text editor, shell window, or programming IDE. I like it over Windows/Mac because of zsh, the curated repos and that it is relatively clean and crapware free.

Without a shell window and a keyboard, desktop Linux has zero value to me and most of its user base. It would be kind of nice to be able to dock a phone and use that for coding without having to carry a netbook with me. But I don't see much value in the GUI app ecosystem on Linux. That has mostly been far surpassed by Android and iOS already.

If Canonical comes up with an easy method to install Ubuntu on Android devices, I will happily try installing it on an old Galaxy phone I've got lying around. It looks like they're making progress on all devices, here's hoping it catches on somewhere.

If this does not work, how was Edge supposed to work? Sounds apps would need extensive custom modifications to work on Edge.

The mobile apps would have worked as well as they do. When you docked it, however you couldn't use those mobile apps since they don't allow desktop apps yet. You would then have a standard Ubuntu desktop. Custom modifications would be optional. It wouldn't have been the most optimal experience, but that would be coming in Unity 8.

I really like Canonical's goals, but I don't like the methods their using. If they would stick to Wayland and implement this, it wouldn't be so much work to maintain all parts of the system internally, and they wouldn't divide the Linux community between two competing X11 replacements.…

I sometimes wonder whether anyone outside the Wayland development community actually understands what Wayland is - which is understandable, because noone seems particularly good at explaining what Wayland is .

If we used Wayland we'd still need to write our own compositor, shell, and window manager, and that's 90+% of the work anyway. We'd probably be able to use the existing Wayland EGL platforms, but I'm just updating the Mir EGL platform for Mesa and the whole thing is <450 lines of text. While it exercises some other code in different ways, so it's a maintenance burden larger than a single 450 line .c file, it's not that much burden.

Canonical can only do Mir because of the 5+ years of investment by various people in the stack that makes Wayland compositors possible, but now that it's there there's not that much to gain by using a Wayland protocol.

What would be the point of running mobile apps on desktops? Many mobile apps are wrappers around web sites that one would normally just visit in a browser on the desktop. Those apps exist only because web standards have limited support for touch, which is the primary input method on mobile device. Web apps are capable of a lot more on desktops because they work well with standard input methods, and because desktop browsers are significantly more powerful than their mobile counterparts. There is no need for a "native" CNN app or banking app on a Core i5 machine when the websites work just fine in a browser.

You miss the point entirely. It's not running mobile apps on desktop, though that is very possible. The point is to run regular apps on your mobile, which is completely stupid until you realize they keep mentioning 'when docked'. People already pair mice and keyboards to their phones. The only thing that is missing is a decent sized display.

The challenge here is getting docks everywhere. But, eventually you just build all that in to the phone itself and you walk into a room wireless HDMI to a screen and pait to keyboard and mouse and you're all set.

Why would anyone want this? 1. Because the device is yours and you trust it. No more sharing concierge computers with keyloggers.2. You don't have to lug a laptop around. 3. You have one device for all your computing. 1. No more forgetting to upload something to the cloud. 2. You always have a full software suite.

Finally as a former Atrix owner, the lapdock was flawed. It wasn't the full integration, and the fundamental flaw was it required tethering to work with your phone which was extra.

If Canonical makes a phone, and a lapdock you can choose to bring along whatever form factor you want.

What would be the point of running mobile apps on desktops? Many mobile apps are wrappers around web sites that one would normally just visit in a browser on the desktop. Those apps exist only because web standards have limited support for touch, which is the primary input method on mobile device. Web apps are capable of a lot more on desktops because they work well with standard input methods, and because desktop browsers are significantly more powerful than their mobile counterparts. There is no need for a "native" CNN app or banking app on a Core i5 machine when the websites work just fine in a browser.

It so happens that being laden with less garbage, mobile apps tend to be more usable than their desktop comrades. Even for a geek like myself.

It'd be awesome if, you could couple your phone to your TV with something like Miracast, but instead of simple mirroring you got a full PC screen & your full phone smartphone screen became a keypad / touchpad to the side.

Not cool for writing a letter, mind you, but for the occasional "I'm lying on the couch but I need to get up and press 3 fucking keys / 2 Next buttons" scenario, that would be AWESOME. Plus, GAMES !

If this does not work, how was Edge supposed to work? Sounds apps would need extensive custom modifications to work on Edge.

The mobile apps would have worked as well as they do. When you docked it, however you couldn't use those mobile apps since they don't allow desktop apps yet. You would then have a standard Ubuntu desktop. Custom modifications would be optional. It wouldn't have been the most optimal experience, but that would be coming in Unity 8.

I really like Canonical's goals, but I don't like the methods their using. If they would stick to Wayland and implement this, it wouldn't be so much work to maintain all parts of the system internally, and they wouldn't divide the Linux community between two competing X11 replacements.…

If we used Wayland we'd still need to write our own compositor, shell, and window manager, and that's 90+% of the work anyway. We'd probably be able to use the existing Wayland EGL platforms, but I'm just updating the Mir EGL platform for Mesa and the whole thing is <450 lines of text. While it exercises some other code in different ways, so it's a maintenance burden larger than a single 450 line .c file, it's not that much burden.

Canonical can only do Mir because of the 5+ years of investment by various people in the stack that makes Wayland compositors possible, but now that it's there there's not that much to gain by using a Wayland protocol.

If you used Wayland protocol...... it wouldn't be necessary to patch GTK, Qt, Mesa, etc, to support Mir.... it wouldn't be necessary to patch Xorg to build Xmir.

And we would not have to sustain a situation where the common denominator between modern Linux distributions is X11, not Wayland nor Mir.

Personally I could only see this useful for people who do no more than light "office work" and switch workplace often (f.i going around different branches) and event hat is questionable but for anyone who doesn't (or very rarely) moves workplace or needs more "power" in the machine then a real workstation is preferred.

The biggest problem I see with this is having a close enough experience between the phone mode and desktop mode, because if they are different enough then you might as well just treat the phone as a portable HDD and use a normal PC for your desktop needs. The more different the experiences are the more different the code paths has to be, and the more different the code paths are the larger the binary will become, and thus will eat up "valuable" storage space.

This is nice, but niche. I don't need to lug a laptop around, but I need to lug a docking station around? Or only use this at my desk where I have a nice docking setup? Clearly, for a lot of programming type usage, high end smartphones have enough power.

What would be the point of running mobile apps on desktops? Many mobile apps are wrappers around web sites that one would normally just visit in a browser on the desktop. Those apps exist only because web standards have limited support for touch, which is the primary input method on mobile device. Web apps are capable of a lot more on desktops because they work well with standard input methods, and because desktop browsers are significantly more powerful than their mobile counterparts. There is no need for a "native" CNN app or banking app on a Core i5 machine when the websites work just fine in a browser.

You miss the point entirely. It's not running mobile apps on desktop, though that is very possible. The point is to run regular apps on your mobile, which is completely stupid until you realize they keep mentioning 'when docked'. People already pair mice and keyboards to their phones. The only thing that is missing is a decent sized display.

I think you are conflating two separate issues. From the article:

Quote:

Cross-platform apps look pretty good on the desktop today, as seen in the above video, but they still aren't totally consistent with the look of other desktop apps. "We haven't finished optimizing them for desktop," Bacon wrote. "As an example, we want to handle menus, add right-click menus, scrollbars etc. That work is on-going. So, today they converge on phone and tablet, and they run on desktop, but in future apps will be optimized to run and feel like desktop apps more."

The other ambitious goal related to mobile/desktop convergence is Canonical's plan to let Ubuntu phones become a full-fledged PC by docking with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Just when this will become available is also unclear.

The first paragraph describes an effort to make mobile apps run on the desktop. That project is distinct from "the other ambitious goal" which, as you stated, is to make desktop apps run on docked mobile devices. I was questioning the need to port the CNN or Reddit apps for mobile devices to desktop environments when the corresponding websites run quite well in desktop web browsers. Those mobile apps are basically derived from the web apps to make the viewing experience more palatable on small touchscreen devices. Desktop computing is advancing to a point where most basic functions can be ably performed by a web browser, hence the rise of Chromebooks. To break web services into separate "native" apps would seem like a step backwards. I mean, would most people using their desktop prefer to fire up a separate "app" to visit Ars instead of simply opening a tab in their browser and going to Arstechnica.com?

I think that Apple is moving in this direction, or at least they're in a good position for the convergence. They stress the model-view-controller paradigm pretty heavily for their apps, and divorcing the view from other two has already helped them with universal apps for mobile devices.

I would love to see a tablet (from Ubuntu, Google, or Apple) that switches the view environment when docked, and go into a full featured mode. And honestly, mail, pages, safari, terminal and photos would cover 80-90 percent of what I'd need.

Could you imagine if they opened that environment and app store to the developers..

1. Because the device is yours and you trust it. No more sharing concierge computers with keyloggers.

But you trust the keyboard, the mouse and the monitor not to be bugged?

Quote:

2. You don't have to lug a laptop around.

So, you can't work unless there is a screen, a mouse, a monitor, and wireless hdmi. No more working in the train. Or anywhere else for that matter.

Quote:

3. You have one device for all your computing.

Yes, the slowest, least powerful one, with the least amount of storage.

Quote:

4. No more forgetting to upload something to the cloud.

Use a web-app, or automatic uploads. Manual uploading is so 2006. :-)

Quote:

5. You always have a full software suite.

But will it run well on a phone?

Two points:

1) Someone above mentioned the possibility of a "lapdock", which would be a laptop form-factor with integrated monitor, keyboard and trackpad. This would take care of the "on a train" situation you reference, but granted that a netbook or laptop would do the same job in that particular situation. Otherwise, that kind of dock would be acceptable to put in concierge-style locations.

2) If this concept were to take off, I would imagine that you'll see a rapid increase in specs for phone and "phablet" in order to bring the environment up to expectations for such a device.

If this does not work, how was Edge supposed to work? Sounds apps would need extensive custom modifications to work on Edge.

The mobile apps would have worked as well as they do. When you docked it, however you couldn't use those mobile apps since they don't allow desktop apps yet. You would then have a standard Ubuntu desktop. Custom modifications would be optional. It wouldn't have been the most optimal experience, but that would be coming in Unity 8.

I really like Canonical's goals, but I don't like the methods their using. If they would stick to Wayland and implement this, it wouldn't be so much work to maintain all parts of the system internally, and they wouldn't divide the Linux community between two competing X11 replacements.…

If we used Wayland we'd still need to write our own compositor, shell, and window manager, and that's 90+% of the work anyway. We'd probably be able to use the existing Wayland EGL platforms, but I'm just updating the Mir EGL platform for Mesa and the whole thing is <450 lines of text. While it exercises some other code in different ways, so it's a maintenance burden larger than a single 450 line .c file, it's not that much burden.

Canonical can only do Mir because of the 5+ years of investment by various people in the stack that makes Wayland compositors possible, but now that it's there there's not that much to gain by using a Wayland protocol.

If you used Wayland protocol...... it wouldn't be necessary to patch GTK, Qt, Mesa, etc, to support Mir.... it wouldn't be necessary to patch Xorg to build Xmir.

We proabably would want to patch GTK, Qt, etc, because we'd very likely have some protocol to support Unity-specific stuff. Well, and we need to patch Qt (or, strictly speaking, provide a Qt Platform plugin) because Qt is a whole lot more than a toolkit, and we want all the other bits of Qt to work with the Ubuntu Touch platform.

This is, roughly speaking, the intended behaviour of Wayland implementations. IIRC GNOME Shell will have some Shell-specific protocol, KDE's likely to have some plasma-specific protocol, etc.

Also, because of the work on those bits of the stack that makes Wayland backends possible, Mir backends for those projects aren't particularly big; typically hundreds to a thousand or so lines.

So, sure, there's some code that we wouldn't have to write and maintain if we used a Wayland protocol. But there's so much more code that we'd have to write regardless. There are benefits as well as costs to doing your own thing, and in this case the costs looked less than the benefits.

And we would not have to sustain a situation where the common denominator between modern Linux distributions is X11, not Wayland nor Mir.

How many application developers use X11? They're crazy¹ if they're using X11 directly.

The lowest common denominator between modern Linux distributions is SDL, GTK+, Qt, etc.

¹: Mostly; it's surprisingly easy to run into stuff that GTK doesn't abstract, and need to drop to X11-specific GTK interfaces. But at the moment there's no common protocol at all for Wayland apps to do those things.

Don't exaggerate.You've already patched GTK in the past, to implement overlay scroll bars.But you didn't have to replace the X11 protocol with a look-a-like for it.Meanwhile, in the Wayland camp they are trying to find common ground and reduce the amount of compositor specific work that needs to be done (eg, the xdg_shell proposal).Nobody questions you have specific needs and wants, and of course that needs work.But what nobody understands is why you have to go so deep in your changes, to the point of using a different protocol, and basically redoing a substantial amount of work more than you'd otherwise need.

Almost by definition, abstraction layers tend to lag behind the underlying system.And, as such, you always end up with "crazy" developers which run into those limitations.And instead of a short list of well abstraction layers, we end up with a laundry list of other stuff dependent on the underlying system.We've got the major abstraction layers. Then we get abstraction layers built on those which push them past the limits (wxWidgets, SWT, VTK, etc).And then we got applications.

What would be the point of running mobile apps on desktops? Many mobile apps are wrappers around web sites that one would normally just visit in a browser on the desktop. Those apps exist only because web standards have limited support for touch, which is the primary input method on mobile device. Web apps are capable of a lot more on desktops because they work well with standard input methods, and because desktop browsers are significantly more powerful than their mobile counterparts. There is no need for a "native" CNN app or banking app on a Core i5 machine when the websites work just fine in a browser.

You miss the point entirely. It's not running mobile apps on desktop, though that is very possible. The point is to run regular apps on your mobile, which is completely stupid until you realize they keep mentioning 'when docked'. People already pair mice and keyboards to their phones. The only thing that is missing is a decent sized display.

I think you are conflating two separate issues. From the article:

Quote:

Cross-platform apps look pretty good on the desktop today, as seen in the above video, but they still aren't totally consistent with the look of other desktop apps. "We haven't finished optimizing them for desktop," Bacon wrote. "As an example, we want to handle menus, add right-click menus, scrollbars etc. That work is on-going. So, today they converge on phone and tablet, and they run on desktop, but in future apps will be optimized to run and feel like desktop apps more."

The other ambitious goal related to mobile/desktop convergence is Canonical's plan to let Ubuntu phones become a full-fledged PC by docking with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Just when this will become available is also unclear.

The first paragraph describes an effort to make mobile apps run on the desktop. That project is distinct from "the other ambitious goal" which, as you stated, is to make desktop apps run on docked mobile devices. I was questioning the need to port the CNN or Reddit apps for mobile devices to desktop environments when the corresponding websites run quite well in desktop web browsers. Those mobile apps are basically derived from the web apps to make the viewing experience more palatable on small touchscreen devices. Desktop computing is advancing to a point where most basic functions can be ably performed by a web browser, hence the rise of Chromebooks. To break web services into separate "native" apps would seem like a step backwards. I mean, would most people using their desktop prefer to fire up a separate "app" to visit Ars instead of simply opening a tab in their browser and going to Arstechnica.com?

You raise some good points, and for the most part I agree with you. However Qt/QML is the basis for Ubuntu Mobile apps, so these should "just work". As for browser or Reddit app, I can't say. I know most mobile sites suck. I already almost always use the desktop version on my phone. However mobile apps are fast and work extremely well. I know I use the Facebook app far more than the Browser. And I think there is something there. Mobile sites vary a LOT, but mobile apps, while they vary, there is a platform style guide. The platform provides common UI elements. Facebook tried to do a HTML5 app, and everyone at facebook hated it.

But I don't think we need to answer that question. Let the users decide. Each has their advantages.

Meanwhile, in the Wayland camp they are trying to find common ground and reduce the amount of compositor specific work that needs to be done (eg, the xdg_shell proposal).Nobody questions you have specific needs and wants, and of course that needs work.But what nobody understands is why you have to go so deep in your changes, to the point of using a different protocol, and basically redoing a substantial amount of work more than you'd otherwise need.

Because, as I've been saying, it's not a substantial amount of work, and it was decided that the work we'd save by picking Wayland was less than the work we'd save by doing our own thing that does exactly what we need.

You're quite correct - we could have used Wayland. But, in our estimation, it would have taken longer and been more work than doing our own thing, ie Mir.

This is an interesting conversation. I'm pro convergence for a couple of reasons:

In such a saturated marketplace, hardware manufacturers and software developers have to continually hike specs and function (arguably the time of Open Source is here), such that we have way-over-specced devices for what we use them for *most* of the time: It won't actually affect most things we routinely do if we went back a few places. Plus, although the market is moving towards touch, mobile devices, there's always going to be a need for some work on high-spec machines, and guess what, Ubuntu works just the same there too.

And that's the second point really. Manufacturers of propretary products continually need to distinguish their devices from the competition. So we have apps that only work on one device, that have to be rebuilt for another, then yet another platform... I think Canonical are being clever to at least say "This part of the coding is common".

As a Chinese Ars member I'd like to comment that Ubuntu Kylin is actually making pretty good progress with preloaded notebooks selling retail not just from Chinese OEMs but Dell and HP, and there is definitely interest in Ubuntu as a future mobile platform, particularly since Android is going in a direction where Google aps, which are pretty useless in China, are ever more important.

So I don't think it is as hopeless as it appears at this point, and it's quite possible Chinese OEMs may adopt Ubuntu before any Western companies do, which is a high risk gamble for them but less so in the Chinese market which embraces disruption and novelty more.

Plus, the government already endorsed Kylin as a platform much as European governments did earlier Linux builds starting in the mid-00s, so there are no roadblocks to adoption.

Very interesting, Xiao-zhi. There was news recently of an "official" OS, can I ask you how popular you think it is, and if you think it will interrupt Ubuntu's progress?

Sorry I'm late to reply. Actually Kylin is the "Official" version that was endorsed by the government to be open source development program for Chinese users because it ultimately promotes more open source development and systems use in China.

Consequentially, much of the development of Kylin has been done by Chinese university students and researchers, and "Hacker Clubs" (yeah we have those, quaint idea).

So what is available now is the Client build preloaded in notebook PCs from Lenovo, HP and Dell, but far as I know it's only for local Chinese market, but if you visited and bought one it would be easy enough to change to an English interface and an advantage is drivers work. In case of Dell, I think they also have a English language Ubuntu preload using the same model selling in the USA as a "Developer Edition", and it's a good quality PC.

Here are some English language article I found for you update the situation and showing some shops. Ubuntu claims 1.3 million Kylin downloads this year.

So I hope this can help to promote Linux worldwide, for most of the world's people, the best system will be an open system and it just gets better.

As for the server version, it is still developing and my understanding is a stable release will be made in 2014 and then it should track the development of the English version. This will be good because there is a shortage of coders with excellent English and excellent Chinese, but working together can bridge the gaps.

I knew that Ubuntu was increasing in popularity in China - though at the time I didn't know it was called Kylin. I'd also read an article about a new Operating System, called COS (China Operating System), and was wondering what impact that was having?

1. Because the device is yours and you trust it. No more sharing concierge computers with keyloggers.

But you trust the keyboard, the mouse and the monitor not to be bugged?

Quote:

2. You don't have to lug a laptop around.

So, you can't work unless there is a screen, a mouse, a monitor, and wireless hdmi. No more working in the train. Or anywhere else for that matter.

Quote:

3. You have one device for all your computing.

Yes, the slowest, least powerful one, with the least amount of storage.

Quote:

4. No more forgetting to upload something to the cloud.

Use a web-app, or automatic uploads. Manual uploading is so 2006. :-)

Quote:

5. You always have a full software suite.

But will it run well on a phone?

Two points:

1) Someone above mentioned the possibility of a "lapdock", which would be a laptop form-factor with integrated monitor, keyboard and trackpad. This would take care of the "on a train" situation you reference, but granted that a netbook or laptop would do the same job in that particular situation. Otherwise, that kind of dock would be acceptable to put in concierge-style locations.

2) If this concept were to take off, I would imagine that you'll see a rapid increase in specs for phone and "phablet" in order to bring the environment up to expectations for such a device.

Seems like people are struggling to find a problem for this "solution" to solve.